Kook King

Bad Things Lead To More Bad Things

RAFE'S POV

The whole reason Rafe went to the Country Club was to see JJ. He went in for a drink and watched JJ carefully. Since he knows Y/N's schedule by heart, he knew she wouldn't be there today. Rafe didn't approach JJ, but they made eye contact from across the room. JJ knew Rafe was there because he avoided Rafe's table as best as he could. Rafe watched him talk to another girl waitress with a smile on his bruised, beaten face. It made Rafe feel slightly better about him and Y/N. Maybe it's true-- maybe JJ is that way with everyone like Y/N said.

Still, though, Rafe wants to make sure JJ knows not to cross the line.

He's still worrying about Y/N even as he paces his empty house, the grandfather clock in the corner of the library ticking along with his heartbeat. She knows now that Rafe had Barry follow her. If only she understood why. Rafe needed to know that he wasn't losing her. The people in his life have had a tendency to lie to him, to keep him out of the loop of important things, like he can't be trusted. Ward doesn't let Rafe know the important details about Cameron Development and Sarah hates him and leaves him out of everything she does. How was Rafe supposed to know that Y/N isn't slipping away from him? That she won't turn against him like his own sister did and choose pogues over him?

Rafe pauses in the corridor, chewing on his thumbnail, and stares at his father's closed office door. Before Ward and Rose return from their trip, Rafe needs to put his father's gun back. Except, a part of him doesn't want to. He doesn't know when he'll need it, especially now that he may have to deal with pogues getting in the way of his relationship with Y/N.

Rafe sneaks into Ward's office, anyway, closing the door almost all the way like his father is home and will hear him if he isn't careful. When Rafe was a kid, he'd get pulled around if Ward found him in here. The memories of his hair being pulled and being pushed up against the door make him wince. Everything is still the same, just as it always has been. Ward's dark mahogany desk stood across the room covered in framed photographs of the family, but mostly of him, Rose, Sarah, and Wheezie. Only a photo of Rafe from seven years ago sits behind the rest of them. Is that the real reason why Ward doesn't allow Rafe to go into his office? Because even though Ward tells Rafe he would never choose between his children, he clearly favors Sarah more and the evidence of it is all over his office?

Rafe pulls his father's gun out from his bag and stares at it, rubbing his thumb up and down the grip, and he curls his finger around the trigger. He turns it over, and it catches the light from the sun coming in through the window. He points the gun across the room, aiming directly at a framed photograph of his family-- Ward, Rose, Sarah, Wheezie, and himself-- from a trip to the Bahamas a few years ago. Back when everything was better. Back when things weren't falling apart.

He doesn't remember if he took the bullets out since he was at Barry's, but something about taking the risk sends a thrill through Rafe, the same way coke does. He takes a deep breath and then pulls the trigger, bracing himself for the sound of an explosion, of glass shattering, the feeling of the gun jerking backwards. His eyes squeeze shut, but there's only a click.

Rafe opens his eyes again and pulls the trigger a second time. Click. Click, click, click. There are no bullets. His shoulders relax as he stares at the gun. He didn't realize how badly he wanted the gun to not have bullets in it until now.

Suddenly, Rafe hears the front door creak open in the next room. He looks up through the crack in the door to see his father, Ward, walking in with a suitcase in tow. He and Rose are back from their business trip, wherever the hell that was. Rafe quickly places the gun in his father's safe and quietly locks it, still keeping an eye out for Ward and Rose in the next room. They talk to each other, but Rafe can't hear exactly what they're saying.